Environment

Food Shortages Caused by Extreme Weather Likely to Triple: Report

August 17 2015 12:00 AM EDT

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Global food shortages will become three times more likely as a result of climate change in the decades ahead, a new U.S.-British joint task force report says.

The report, released Friday by the U.K.-U.S. Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience, focuses on the rising risks of disruptions to the world's food supply and price spikes thanks to extreme weather events – and says that food production "shocks" will likely go from something that happens once a century to something that happens every 30 years or so.

"It is likely that the effects of climate change will be felt most strongly through the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and floods and their impact on the production and distribution of food – something we almost take for granted," said Tim Benton, a professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds and one of the report's co-authors, in a statement.

A malnourished boy is shown at a feeding center in Damota Pulassa village, in southern Ethiopia in this file photo from June 2008.

(JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images)

Agricultural methods will need to be changed to adapt to a changing climate and become more resilient in the face of extreme weather events like these, the report adds, while also becoming more productive to meet the demands of a rising global population, which is expected to reach over 9 billion by mid-century, up from about 7 billion today.

Increased demand will also come from large numbers of people rising from poverty into the global middle class, the report says. The world's food system is so vulnerable because food crops like wheat come from a small number of producing countries, the report adds, which means that many parts of the world can be impacted when weather events disrupt production.

Production shocks could cause civil unrest, the report's authors also say, especially in nations dependent on importing their food like those in Sub-Saharan Africa. "In fragile political contexts where household food insecurity is high, civil unrest might spill over into violence or conflict," the report says.

To prevent or at least ease the pain from such shocks, food-producing nations are urged not to impose export restrictions as Russia did in 2010 after a poor harvest, Reuters notes.

"This study presents a plausible scenario for how the food system might be impacted by extreme weather, alongside a series of recommendations that should help policy and business plan for the future," Benton added. "Action is urgently needed to understand risks better, improve the resilience of the global food system to weather-related shocks and to mitigate their impact on people."

NASA Change: Arapaho Glacier, Colorado (1898)

The Aprapaho Glacier in Colorado in 1898. (NASA)

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